Microsoft Condenses AI Tech To Just One Division; Cortana, Bing And Research Merged

One of the largest alliances within the tech industry was just formed in the pursuit of artificial intelligence and one of its members is Microsoft. In a bid to do its part in advancing AI technology and injecting it into the daily lives of users, the tech giant is merging its Bing and Cortana products with its Research division.

Right now, both Cortana and Bing are having trouble making any real impact on their respective markets. The goal of merging the three aspects of Microsoft is to accelerate advancements in the products, PC World reports.

Microsoft’s research division has been tasked with creating technologies to add to the Cortana and Bing range in the past, with the mandate of applying those innovations in the future. This is pretty much the same setup as with many other companies. However, fusing the groups working specifically on the two offerings with the division that is more forward-looking is something that only Microsoft has done so far.

As a result of the merger, the one group will now be comprised of 5,000 researchers, engineers, and programmers. Their tasks will likely branch off in terms of which workers work on what product, but on the whole, complete AI integration is the main goal. This now makes Microsoft’s larger groups a total of four, with the rest being Azure, Office, and Windows, Ars Technica reports.

Microsoft is particularly interested in pushing for the wider adoption of many of its products that resulted from its machine learning efforts, which include advanced facial recognition and chatbots. Among the corporate customers already using these technologies is Uber, which makes use of the facial recognition service of Microsoft to keep its drivers on a short leash. With the newly christened “AI and Research Group,” the company hopes to make even bigger strides in the AI industry.